Lush Life

Words & Music by Billy Strayhorn
Recorded by Linda Ronstadt, 1984

Intro Verse:
E7 A E7 Fdim A
I used to visit all the very gay places,
E7 Fdim A
Those come what may places,
E7 A D9 A Cdim AM7
Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life,
Fdim(III) AM7 Fdim AM7
To get the feel of life from jazz and cocktails.
E7 A E7 Fdim A
The girls I knew had sad and sullen gray faces
E7 Fdim A
With distant gay traces
E7 A D9 A Cdim AM7
That used to be there -- you could see where they'd been washed away
Fdim(III) AM7 Fdim AM7
By too many through the day...twelve o'clock tales.
A7 Dm A7 Dm Dm(V) Gm Dm
Then you came along with your siren of song to tempt me to madness!
A7 Dm A7 Dm Dm(V) Gm A
I thought for a while that your poignant smile was tinged with the sadness
Gdim Fdim(III)
Of a great love for me.
Fdim Gdim Fdim E Dm6 F
Ah yes! I was wrong again, I was wrong.
Melody:
Bb Fm Bb
Life is lonely again,
F Bb6 F Bb A C#
And only last year everything seemed so sure.
C Bb Fm Bb
Now life is awful again,
F Bb6 F Bb A C#
A trough full of hearts could only be a bore.
F B F B Bb
A week in Paris could ease the bite of it,
Bb Bbm9 Bb Cdim Bbm9
All I care is to smile in spite of it.
Bb Bbm9 Bb F7 Bb6
I'll forget you, I will, while yet you are still
F Bb A C#
Burning inside my brain.
F Fdim
Romance is mush,
Fdim(III) Bb F7/6
Stifling those who strive.
Bb9 Cdim Bb Gm7 Gdim
So I'll live a lush life in some small dive...
Bb Bbm Cdim Bb F7/6
And there I'll be, while I rot with the rest
F7 Eb E7 F7 F#7 F7 Gdim Bb
Of those whose lives are lone - ly, too.

*Few songs have been requested as often as this one -- or proven as difficult to capture. And I'll be the first to admit it: I do not believe I could perform it at anywhere near an acceptable level, so I'm violating my own benchmark of "this is how I play it" for the songs I post here. (One only needs to be aware of how much I dislike trying to play an E-flat-anything chord, and my strong perference NOT to use barre chord formations, to guess as much.) I suppose it's a case of one's reach exceeding one's grasp as much as it is a case of the number of people who've asked me to try. Do NOT take this one as Gospel-anything. Use it to get yourself started, and let it take you where it will. This will have to do until somebody can find a way to make it more accurate OR more playable.

The lyric and guitar chord transcriptions on this site are the work of The Guitarguy and are intended for private study, research, or educational purposes only. Individual transcriptions are inspired by and and based upon the recorded versions cited, but are not necessarily exact replications of those recorded versions.